You’ve got an idea for a book. That’s important—you can’t have a book without an idea! But just any idea is not quite good enough. You need to turn it into a great idea. To do that, you need to think about it, and think about it some more. You need to talk about it and then talk about it with someone else. You need to scribble notes on scraps of paper and type lots of random sentences into your phone.

During this process, we will not be in a hurry. At all. As a matter of fact, you’re going to deliberately take your time. Take walks in the neighborhood. Write pre-drafts. Change your mind. Sleep on it. You’re wooing the creative gods here. You’re throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

You may see people offering a way to “write a book in 30 days.” No thanks! We want people to still be reading this book in 10 years, so it’s okay if it takes a year to write it. So go ahead and readjust your expectations and timeline—we’re going to stew on this idea.

Neil Gaiman said, “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”¹

As you begin to clarify your idea, let me tell you what doesn’t matter yet: 

• The title
• What the cover will look like
• Whether you’ll self-publish or work with a publishing company 
• The release date 
• How many copies you’ll sell

These are fun things to think about, but they don’t help you actually write your book. What you need first, before anything else, is an idea so good, so compelling, and so sticky that you will happily dedicate the next 12 to 24 months of your life to writing about it. An average idea won’t cut it. This idea needs to compel you to return to your computer day after day. 

I keep a list of ideas on my phone. I have new book ideas every day, not to mention countless impulse domain purchases, but I’ve only written a handful of books. Do you know why? Because most ideas aren’t compelling enough to spend 18 months writing 50,000 words and reading a few hundred thousand more for research.

Every idea seems like a good idea when you first think of it, but do you forget about it, or does it keep you up at night? Does it fade after a day, or does it follow you into the shower? Are you obsessed with it?

Am I being a little dramatic here? Maybe a little, but not really. If you are not completely obsessed with your idea, if you don’t feel like you have to write this book or your life will feel like a meaningless failure, how do you expect to capture the attention of someone who can choose from millions of other books? 

Don’t get scared! When I say “great idea,” I’m not saying that you have to write a revolutionary book about a topic that has never been covered—trying to think of a groundbreaking topic can be paralyzing. Normal, traditional categories are fine, and even preferable. But within that category, you need an angle, approach, or point of view that makes the reader feel like they’re hearing it for the first time.

This chapter will focus on generating and honing ideas for nonfiction books, as that’s where my experience is. If you have an idea for a fiction book, that’s great, too! Much of the creation process is the same, so the rest of the chapters will still help guide you through the process.

There’s no universal law, but in general, a compelling idea for a nonfiction book is one of four things:

1. A new way to accomplish a basic human desire
2. A contrary view of a popular belief
3. A new approach to an old problem
4. A new way to tell a compelling story

Here are some famous examples:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. 
• Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
• The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For?
• ???

These are great ideas. They speak to universal, never-expiring desires of the human heart, or they promise that you will change in some way that everyone wants to change if you read their book, or they position themselves as a different approach in a world full of conventional thinkers. They’re interesting and marketable. That’s the combination we’re looking for.

Some writers might push back at this point. Shouldn’t you write what’s in your heart? Who cares if it’s marketable? They see themselves as purists, protecting literature from being overtaken by capitalism. And I agree, there’s certainly nothing wrong with writing a passion project with little public appeal. But the purpose of this book is to write and market something people will buy. With that in mind, the topic of your book is extremely important, because it’s almost impossible to market a book about a topic no one cares about. 

I’m not saying you should search Google for the most popular keywords and write your book to cater to the algorithm. Of course, you need to have some personal interest in the topic, and money is not a strong enough personal interest, because the chances are low that you will make serious money on this endeavor. But there’s nothing wrong, gross, or inauthentic about trying to write something with commercial appeal.

So how do you find a compelling idea? There are lots of ways to do it, but here’s my method.

I always start with a compelling question. For my book “Deep Change,” it was, Why are so many Christians (like me) emotionally immature? I thought about that question for months. I couldn’t shake it. You need one of those.

There are countless compelling questions and ideas. Who knows where they come from, but they can hit you anywhere—in the shower, while you’re driving down the road, or while you’re reading another book. When you get a good one, you need to write it down somewhere, because they leave as quickly as they come.

So that’s where you begin, with a compelling, exciting, haunting, won’t-leave-you-alone idea. It doesn’t have to be original—there’s really no such a thing as an original idea at this point—but it does need to be unique. And it helps if you’re uniquely qualified to talk about it, but that’s not required.

Some ideas have been written about extensively. That doesn’t mean you can’t write about them too, but if there is a book that is the go-to book, the authority, on a topic already written in a given category, I would encourage you to figure out a fresh way to niche down your topic.

For example, maybe you want to write about parenting. There are many great books about parenting, and there will always be a compelling need for more books on the topic, but parenting is very broad. What if you niched down?

Parenting for fathers 
Balancing parenting and work 
Parenting in a technological age

Most aspiring authors are afraid of being more specific because they’re afraid to narrow their audience. When you don’t write for anyone in particular, you write for no one. Narrowing it down and identifying exactly who you’re writing for helps potential readers determine whether the book is for them.²

After I have a compelling idea or question, next I try to find the answer.

This means I read, and read, and read. Yes, you can technically write a book without reading a lot of other books. I guess you could just fill it with personal stories or anecdotes. But there is an entire library of literature out there with millions of words on your topic. Why would you not want to read them? Because it will take longer? Because you’re busy? You’re writing a book on how leaders make hard decisions, and you don’t even want to consider how Harry Truman felt before dropping the atomic bomb? You’re writing a book on being courageous in the face of political pressure, and you don’t want to read the letters and journal entries of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Dietrich Bonhoeffer?  

Stories are engaging, and when you support your ideas with time-tested lessons from great stories—from history, pop culture, scientific research, and more—it validates what you’re trying to say and gives you credibility as someone who knows what they’re talking about. You’ve studied it.

The next time you read a nonfiction book, do a little experiment: notice how many times the author uses the word “I.” The best books, in my opinion, don’t use “I” very much, because the book is not about the author; it’s about the topic or idea that compelled the author to write the book. There’s a difference.³

Of course, there are exceptions. Memoirs, like “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, are an example. Some people have genuinely been through something so remarkable that they need to tell their story, and if your idea is for a memoir, testing the idea will be a very important step for your book. Most of us are better off telling a better story about someone else.

So this is the starting line. You need a great idea, and once you have one of those, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Challenge:

If you have an idea for your book already, write down 10 versions of the idea that are more focused and niche. For example, if your idea is money management, you could niche it down to:

• Money management for newlyweds
• Money management for single moms
• Money management for entrepreneurs with irregular income
• Money management for college graduates starting their careers
• Money management for people starting over after bankruptcy
• How to pay off debt
• How to save $10,000
• How to go from two incomes to one so your spouse can stay home with the kids
• How to live on a budget when your salary is commission-based
• How to go 30 days without eating at restaurants 

As you look at the list, do any of the ideas really excite you? Is there one that you’ve personally lived through and could teach others better than anyone else? 

Take a few days and think about it. We’re not in a hurry. Once you’re ready, select the two to three ideas that have the most potential. You’re going to use them in the next chapter.